The California legislature unanimously passed the strongest data privacy law

The California legislature unanimously passed the strongest data privacy law

The California legislature unanimously passed the strongest data privacy law in the nation. This is great news, but I have a lot of reservations. The Internet tech companies pressed to get this law passed out of self-defense. A ballot initiative was already going to be voted on in November, one with even stronger data privacy protections. The author of that initiative agreed to pull it if the legislature passed something similar, and that’s why it did. This law doesn’t take effect until 2020, and that gives the legislature a lot of time to amend the law before it actually protects anyone’s privacy. And a conventional law is much easier to amend than a ballot initiative. Just as the California legislature gutted its net neutrality law in committee at the behest of the telcos, I expect it to do the same with this law at the behest of the Internet giants.